Assyrian Empire

The Assyrian Empire (911-612 BC), also known as the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was a great civilization from northern Iraq. The Assyrians revered their king as the center of the universe, and they had unprecedented conquests until the Neo-Babylonian Empire and Median Empire conquered them in 612 BC.

History
In the centuries after 1000 BC, new civilizations emerged in Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia became a new empire. The rulers of Assyria led a ceaseless series of campaigns westward across the plain and desert as far as the Mediterranean Sea, north into the mountainous Urartu (modern Armenia), east across the Zagros Mountains onto the Iranian plateau, and south along the Tigris River to Babylonia. These campaigns provided immediate booty and the long-term prospect of tribute and taxes, and they gained iron and silver, giving them control of international commerce. Driven by pride, greed, and religious conviction, the Assyrians defeated the other great kingdoms.

The king was literaly and symbolically the center of the Assyrian universe. All the land belonged to him and all the people (even the highest-ranking officials) were his servants. Assyrians believed that the gods chose their king as their earthly representative, and royal inscriptions posted through the empire catalogued recent victories and threatened punishments to anyone who resisted. Visitors were awed and intimidated by these, as well as by reliefs depicting hunts, battles, sieges, executions, and deportations. King Tiglath-Pileser (r. 744-727 BC) created a core army of professional Assyrian soldiers and formed a great force. The Assyrians used iuron weapons, and they usually dug tunnels under the walls, built mobile towers for archers, and applied battering rams to weak points.

The Assyrians forced mass deportations of rebellious peoples to intimidate them, and the vast majority of subjects worked on the land. The surpluses of agriculture allowed for substantial numbers of people (the army, government officials, religious experts, merchants, artisans, and other professionals) to engage in specialized activities. Ashurbanipal, one of the last Assyrian kings, built the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, which housed 25,000 tablets or fragments. The Assyrians were conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 612 BC.